Information's Everywhere, But You're Still Stuck: How to Delegate to AI

Something I've been sitting with. I've invested years and a significant amount of money in professional development, including three degrees, coaching, classes, courses, and certifications. I'd invest in learning again. When someone teaches you, they teach you from their perspective, and they hand you something you didn't know you needed to know.

And I applied nearly all of it. That is the only reason it was worth the money.

Knowledge is everywhere. You cannot say you did not know.

Which is why I don't think information is the gap. Most of what I paid for, you could find free by this afternoon. What you can't download is having done it.

Execution is the advantage. It's the difference between hoping, and having.

How to hand off work you don't know how to do

Twenty years in HR makes you excellent at HR. It doesn't make you good at selling, at scoping work so it stays inside the hours you agreed to, at marketing, or at getting an invoice out the door. Every one of those is its own domain. You either learn it well enough to run it, or you find someone who has, the same way people hire you for what you know.

Inside a company it's the same shape with different names. You can be the best analyst in the building and still have no idea how to get your work seen.

Until recently there were two options and both were expensive. Learn the domain, which costs years. Hire someone who knows it, which costs money you might not have yet.

There's a third now. It's worth doing properly, because most people do it badly and then decide the tool doesn't work.

Ask for the outcome, not the domain. “Help me with SEO” gets a generic answer, because it's a generic question. Try this instead:

“I want the people who need what I do to find me. Do deep research into their pain points, how they shop, and what they are already paying and searching for to solve their problem. Then make me a list of outreach strategies organized from the ones I can fully automate with AI to the ones that need more of my personal involvement, and the revenue potential of each.”

Give it the part only you have. Who the work is for. What good looks like to you specifically, not in general. And what you already tried, plus what happened when you did. That last one saves the most time and gets left out the most.

Make it explain itself while it works. Ask why it made each call. You're not trying to become an expert. You're trying to build enough judgment to catch it when it's wrong.

Then judge it by the outcome, which is why you started there. Is it getting you more views? Leads? Revenue? Or inversely, is nothing selling and no one engaging? Assess the data and either double down or pivot. The speed at which you can test and iterate is the fastest it has ever been, and that speed is the real advantage.

Action gives you the information you didn't know you needed. Evidence, then confidence, then results. You can't read your way into that sequence, because reading only ever gets you somebody else's evidence.

One thing to do today

Write down the parts your work actually runs on. The craft you're known for, then selling, delivering inside the hours you promised, marketing, and the back office.

Put a check next to the ones you genuinely know. Circle the one you keep avoiding.

Now hand that one to your AI. Tell it what you're trying to do, what good looks like to you, and who it's for. Ask it to teach you the part you're missing, and then to do the next step with you. You are not trying to become expert in it. You're trying to stop being blocked by it.

If this is your kind of conversation, join me for the next Seed & Society® newsletter.